The common European asylum system and the social emergency of unaccompanied foreign minors

Serena Baldin and Moreno Zago introduce the legal framework of asylum and illustrate the policies provided for unaccompanied foreign minors. Asylum is a form of protection given by a State on its territory to persons escaping persecution. After a brief explanation of the progressive assimilation of the constitutional concept of asylum to the refugee status regulated by the 1951 Geneva Convention, that has as a consequence the restriction of the potential beneficiaries of the asylum, the chapter intends to date back to the EU milestones in the ambit of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) from the legal point of view (§ 2) and to put forward the present EU proposals elaborated to strengthen the asylum system in the Member States (§ 3). Subsequently, the phenomenon of unaccompanied foreign minors in the EU will be analysed (§ 4), pointing out the main aspects of “The Action Plan on Unaccompanied Minors” (§ 5), and the contributions that sociologysts and other experts can give in order to emphasize the importance of an approach that enables these minors to understand the new cultural references and to be understood with their own cultural heritage and their own experiences (§ 6).